Catacombs Reference Library
UK Press
Titbits

Photoplay (UK), November 1975, p54-55. This was the UK version of the US title, which started in the 1950s and outlasted the US original, until the mid-1980s. From the late 1960s to the mid-1970s it was "Photoplay Film Monthly"; from 1978 it was "Photoplay Film and TV Scene", and from 1981 "Photoplay Movies and Video".

On Moon Base Alpha with the Martin Landaus

When the series Space '999 was in producticn at Pinewood Studios, Laurence Meredith visited the set. This is his report..

It was the year 1999 on the set. I had casually joined Martin Landau and Barbara Bain on the Moon. Not the whole Moon but that part which was blown off by a giant atomic explosion and was hurtling through outer space.

They were remarkably calm. considering the circumstances. I had caught up with them in the midst of an episode Of their new television series, 24 one-hour shows called Space 1999.

By now they had lost all contact with Earth and were under constant attack from super-beings inhabiting unknown worlds.

The great explosion of atomic waste from Earth which had been stored on the Moon had long since taken place. Here in this episode they and 300 assistants in their Moon Base Alpha were hurtling past strange worlds where time and space had no meaning. Worse yet, strange beings. some invisible, were penetrating their laboratory and even taking possession of human bodies within.

Moon Base Alpha was serving as a base for investigation of deep space when the Moon explosion occurred. It was to become. if necessary. the first outpost Of Earth's defence against threats from hostile worlds.

The laboratory and control room flickers with the winking lights from countless computers while the great television radar screen shows the hazy outline of a strange and obviously unfriendly planet

In control is Martin Landau as Commander John Robert Koenig. former astronaut, now a senior astrophysicist. By his side is Barbara Bain as Dr. Helena Russell. a widow wrapped up in her job as chief of Alpha's medical section.

The relationship between Landau and Bain, purely professional in the opening episodes, shows signs of ripening - no surprise to viewers who know them as real-life man and wife.

The Landaus talked enthusiastically of their new series, their first together since the internationally popular Mission: Impossible.

After 17 years of marriage, 80 episodes of Mission: Impossible and numerous other co-starring roles they have no trouble jointly conducting the same conversation. One starts a sentence and the other finishes it. Or they say the same thing simultaneously.

Both: "It is 1999 but it could happen now if a decision were made to build such a base. So it's not set in some strange future but is, rather terrifyingly, what could happen now."

She: "We're able to feed ourselves. Our problem is survival — like the Pioneers. So, in an odd way, it's really a throwback because we're dependent on each other. Like a small community in wartime."

He: "Like a small town."

She: "The episodes are separate stories and they're quite different. but they involve mostly the same people. The interest is in what we encounter."

He: "We have a love story."

She: "We go to one place but can't stay because we don't find it suitable in terms of things we need. And in another we can't stay because our natures begin to change in this strange environment. Those are some of the problems we have to deal with during our long journey through space."